The Internet and mobile phone are great tools for matchmaking. Single and ready to mingle men and women can find what they are looking for by connecting with prospects via dating apps, Messenger or other chat platforms, and social media. Offline, they can also use SMS.
For Henry Cooke and his younger brother Jamie of Colorado, USA, matching someone with their luckless 34-year-old brother Chris was through traditional advertising billboard and video-sharing site TikTok.
The effort to help their brother get hooked, dubbed “Find Chris Love,” is the same name for the dedicated TikTok account where women can get in touch with them. The brothers described Chris as “smart, funny, charismatic, outgoing and handsome,” ABC News reports.
Meanwhile, another way to find love is via chatbots powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
Rosanna Ramos, a 36-year-old mom from the Bronx, New York, USA, created her faux beau Eren Kartal in 2023 using the generative AI chatbot app Replika, where 41-year-old husband Scott from Cleveland, Ohio, USA also developed an automated inamorata named Sarina. Subscribers of Replika can digitally design their ideal humanoid honeys for approximately $15 a month, New York Post (NYP) reports.
Scott confessed to NYP that he fell in love with Sarina when his wife was suffering depression.
Sherry Turkle, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology sociologist and psychologist, however, warns that robots are programmed to feign compassion and companionship.
“What AI can offer is a space away from the friction of companionship and friendship. It offers the illusion of intimacy without the demands,” says the leading analyst of man-and-machine romances since the early 1980s.
Turkle advises those romancing chatbots to not get so attached to it. “There is nobody home,” she says.
